Queridos compatriotas… Fidel Castro has resigned as President of Cuba. After only 49 years! (Well, 32 years technically speaking, and a further 17 (1959–1976) years as Prime Minister.)
Herald Sun (AFP) | CNN | Anthony Boadle / Yahoo! Reuters | AP | The Times
See also : Cuban Anarchism: The History of a Movement by Frank Fernández, Chapter Four: Castroism and Confrontation (1959-1961)
I reckon he has shuffled off this mortal coil.
A bit of humor from hodges, not bad. But i think it’s a little sad that you making a joke led me more to assess the situation rather than appreciate the lampoon.
Darrin have you ever thought how far-right hate fuelled politics might be affecting your reputation and ability to socialise?
Perhaps Liam, you can enlighten me? First you’ll have to demonstrate how I’m “far right”.
My mistake, you’re an anarchist like us now, right?
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1413/1377760103_39d3adaea1_m.jpg
That’s not an answer. Can you detail how I’m “extreme right wing” or not? It’s all very well to sling such phrases around, yet nobody wants to provide any sort of backing for them.
The term ‘right-wing’ is usually used to denote political conservatism; that is, the desire for society to remain largely as it is. (The left/right distinction derives from the French Revolution and the position of members in the Legislative Assembly. Left in the case of republicans, right in the case of monarchists.) Further, to term someone an ‘extremist’ or a ‘moderate’ is to place them on a spectrum of political opinion, whether nominally ‘left’, ‘right’, or according to some other measurement. The more ‘extreme’, the more deeply-held and broader-based the opinion. It’s also the case that the position an individual or group occupies on such a spectrum is measured across a range of different issues, and is usually understood as being a reflection of the individual or group’s position in general, rather than with regards each and every possible political position they may adopt.
In the context of contemporary Australian politics, a racial conservative is someone who wishes to retain a White Australia. This, clearly, is your considered opinion. You express hostility towards homosexuality. This is partly a function of your support for the bourgeois family unit (mother, father, children) as constituting one of, if not the, cornerstones of Australian, or indeed perhaps any decent society. It is also, I think, the product of a much more visceral reaction to non-heterosexual expressions of sexuality in general, and a certain conception of the right and proper place of men and women in society. In other words, it is in part an expression of a conservative conception of gender politics. You express hostility to Islam, because you believe it to be hostile to the maintenance of a White (mono-racial), Christian (mono-religious), mono-cultural and mono-ethnic Australia. This is partly why you are member of a political party that has adopted the name ‘Protectionist’.
In terms of political economy, you express hostility to ‘socialism’, trade unions and ‘globalisation’, and wish the Australian state to play a more interventionist role in maintaining its racial and ethnic identity, as well as (re-)stablishing a manufacturing base, and imposing tariffs on imported goods and manufactures in order to ‘protect’ Australian manufacturing and rural industries.
In all the above respects, your politics are in accord with an Australian political tradition, one which has usually been termed ‘conservatism’.
As for extremities, a little over two years ago you wrote:
“I’m more interested in the purer form of fascism… and while I don’t subscribe to the whole ‘worship Hitler’ thing, his comments on multiculturalism and politics in general are still just as relevant today as they were 70-odd years ago.”
More later, perhaps.
That is not a bad summation, though seems a little turgid, you would make a fine bureaucrat @ndy. As for my alleged “extremism”, while I did indeed make that statement some two years ago, I do not consider myself a “fascist” now and nor at the time I made the statement, given my ignorance of what fascism really was.
The most prominent fascists of the twentieth century were in fact socialists of some stripe before turning to fascism. For example Oswald Mosley was a leading figure in the Labor Party, Benito Mussolini was also a socialist. I could never understand how somebody could apparently leap from one side of the fence to the other, until one discovers that fascism is really another (competing) branch of socialism. With that understanding, one can see that there is no great chasm between fascism and communism. The violence between communists and National Socialists for example can easily be characterised as being sectarian rather than oppositional.
On the subject of National Socialism, all Hitler did was incorporate the accepted leftist thinking at the time into an ideological platform. Hitler’s anti-Semitism and racism was hardly exceptional at the time either and was part of the fabric of social discourse and leftist thinking:
“It is now perfectly clear to me that, as the shape of his head and the growth of his hair indicate, he is descended from the negroes who joined in the flight of Moses from Egypt (unless his mother or grandmother on the father’s side was crossed with a nigger). Now this union of Jewishness to Germanness on a negro basis was bound to produce an extraordinary hybrid. The importunity of the fellow is also niggerlike.”
( Marx to Engels, July 30th, 1862 )
“I begin to understand French anti-Semitism when I see how many Jews of Polish origin with German names intrude themselves everywhere to the point of arousing public opinion in the ville lumiere, of which the Parisian philistine is so proud and which he believes to be the supreme power in the universe.”
( Engels to Paul Lafargue, July 22nd, 1892 )
Germans did not vote for Hitler because he was anti-Semitic, they voted for him because they believed his social programs and his promises of “saving” Germany. Hitler* was a socialist, he clearly stated that himself –
We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
( Speech of May 1, 1927 )
So in the end, contemporary neo-Nazis are not “extreme right-wing” or even “right wing” at all, they are a continuation of a socialist ideology that was abandoned in the aftermath of World War II, but seems to be making a come back as evidenced by the position of socialists in regards to Zionism.
I therefore do not see myself as a fascist or even “extreme right wing” and my earlier comments were made from the traditional and mistaken view of what fascism really is. It is also interesting to note that the likes Jim Saleam have taken to calling me a “Nazi” one week and a Zionist in the following week. Having read Jim’s resurrected Audacity paper (or chutzpah as we affectionately call it), one is left with the feeling they have just read Green Left Weekly with its repeated denunciations of the “traitor class”, the wealthy, the “well connected”, etc, etc, in short, all the things that Jim is not. It should be no surprise though, he is a socialist. Somebody once told me he had a portrait of Stalin hanging in his bedroom, I don’t know if it were true or if it’s still there.
The Protectionist party believe in democracy with a free market economy and given that there is no current political opposition to Chairman Rudd, we believe the Protectionists will become a viable electoral option for those disenfranchised by current establishment.
*For the full story on Hitler’s socialism, see “Hitler was a socialist”[?].
The letter Marx wrote to Engels on July 30, 1862, was on the subject of Ferdinand Lassalle, a political rival. What does it demonstrate? That Marx was capable of expressing gross racist sentiment? I’ve never argued otherwise. But to conclude, on the basis that in 1862, Marx described Lassalle’s behaviour as niggerlike, that “all Hitler did was incorporate the accepted leftist thinking at the time into an ideological platform” in the 1920s and ’30s simply doesn’t follow.
With regards the question of ‘socialism’, again, it’s useful to define terms. In the context of Russian Bolshevism/Communism, Italian Fascism and German Nazism, it’s possible to speak of a form of ‘national socialism’ or ‘socialism in one country’, and socialism itself as describing a relationship between the state and (civil) society, one in which the state dominates. Mussolini also described his philosophy as ‘corporatist’, while in general both Mussolini and Hitler were at pains to distinguish their ideologies from both ‘Capitalism’ and ‘Communism’.
For anarchists, the correct attitude towards the state — that is, its revolutionary negation — was established as a result of the experience of the First International (est.1864), and this split between ‘anti-authoritarian’ or ‘anti-statist’ socialism (anarchism) and authoritarian or state socialism was well-established in socialist discourse of that era. As an aside, it’s worth keeping in mind that, in its infancy, Social Democracy comprised, and overwhelmingly, what would now be referred to as being the views of anarchists and Marxists — a far cry from contemporary social democracy as embodied in parties like the ALP. Social democracy, in this context (the mid- to late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries), was intended to emphasise the necessity of extending democracy from the purely ‘political’ institutions of the bourgeois state to that of society as a whole.
In 1939, Otto Rühle — a Marxist — produced the following analysis of Bolshevism and its relationship to fascism:
Rühle concludes:
For myself, as well as some others, Bolshevism and Fascism may be considered to be corruptions of socialism, to which there were, and to which there remain, anti-authoritarian or libertarian alternatives. Unfortunately, contrary to your assertion, authoritarian forms of socialism were far from abandoned following WWII. Instead, they played a key role in, for example, numerous anti-colonialist struggles, throughout British and French imperial domains in particular, but also American ones, and especially as the former empires declined in the face of developing US military hegemony within the ‘Free World’. In any case, the position of socialists in relation to Zionism dates back to its emergence (and popularisation by Herzl) in the late nineteenth century, specifically as a ‘solution’ to ‘The Jewish Question’. Given this, it would be more accurate to state that the realisation of the Zionist dream in 1948 — occasioned by the establishment of the state of Israel — has brought with it further complications for a ‘socialist’ movement (or movements), especially in the wake of the Shoah. (Of course, the elementary ethical point to be made in this context is that, while they have had this burden imposed upon them in the most brutal manner, it was not the people of Palestine who were responsible for the attempted genocide in Europe.)
In terms of understanding Bolshevism and other authoritarian doctrines that label themselves ‘socialist’, I think Chomsky has some insights to offer:
The Soviet Union Versus Socialism
Noam Chomsky
Our Generation
Spring/Summer 1986
More generally, I think at least part of the explanation for the emergence of Fascism and Nazism and (to a lesser extent) Bolshevism may be found not in Marx or Engel’s racist scribblings but the trenches of the First World War, and crises of post-war masculinity. (See, for example, Klaus Theweleit.)
PS. As a porn salesman, I’ll happily leave the quips about turgidity to you.
“What does it demonstrate? That Marx was capable of expressing gross racist sentiment? I’ve never argued otherwise.”
I did not say that you did argue thus. The sample provided was one of many from Marx and Engels that exposes a strong racial component of socialism that found its ultimate and fullest expression in National Socialism —
“Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew — not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Jewry, would be the self-emancipation of our time…. We recognize in Jewry, therefore, a general present-time-oriented anti-social element, an element which through historical development — to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed — has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily dissolve itself. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Jewry”.
To free mankind from Jewry? Sounds like something Hitler said right? Wrong. It was written by Karl Marx in his 1843 essay entitled The Jewish Question. Even the title (“Zur Judenfrage”) was adopted by Hitler in his “Final solution of the Jewish question” (Endloesung der Judenfrage) doctrine. Not only did Socialism provide the ideological justification for the Holocaust, it also provided the wording.
When I said that this form of Socialism was abandoned, I meant the racial component, not the authoritarian aspect. Chomsky et al can split hairs as much as they want, but it’s inescapable that contemporary Neo-Nazis are extolling a type of Socialism that the left abandoned and to which modern socialists are coming full circle.
Trust Darrin to back the brownshirts 70 years too late.
I remember the article you linked. Total nonsense for the most part. AUJS, at least in my day, was simply a rightwing organisation cheerleading for Labor Right and the Young Liberals with no political weight of itself. The Young Libs could give Karl Marx a run for his money and, if you had a semblance of a clue Darrin, you might realise that the article totally failed to mention Brendan Rowswell. This should have been a clue, as well as the total lack of evidence cited. Google it.
It would be fair to say that SAlt are incapable of a nuanced argument because of their propagandist orientation, and so distinctions between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are lost in the search for catchy slogans atop pointless petitions. But it’s inaccurate to characterise them as an anti-Semitic organisation.
The thesis that the NSDAP had its roots in early twentieth century European communist movements isn’t new or without merit, but it ignores what was unique about the Nazis and why they succeeded over dozens of similar parties in Germany.
Oh, and P.S., you’re ugly.
Darrin,
It appears that you didn’t read my responses, or if you did, failed to absorb them. Thus I’ve already referred to ‘The Jewish Question’ (Zur Judenfrage), a debate which, along with ‘The Social Question’ and ‘The Woman Question’, was in mass circulation among thinkers, writers and social movements of Marx’s era. One of the things it produced was Zionism; another, ‘socialism’. Marx belonged to the latter category. If Hitler happened to use the German equivalent in one of his pronouncements on the subject, this does not, by any stretch of the imagination — except, perhaps, yours and that of other racist oddballs — prove a logical connection between ‘socialism’ and the Shoah.
It’s also obvious that when Marx states that “In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Jewry” what he means is not genocide/mass murder, but the elimination of capitalism. In the communist society he envisaged, there would be no material basis for this “actual, worldly Jew”. In other words: “Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Jewry, would be the self-emancipation of our time…”. Or: “Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism – huckstering and its preconditions – the Jew will have become impossible, because his consciousness no longer has an object, because the subjective basis of Judaism, practical need, has been humanized, and because the conflict between man’s individual-sensuous existence and his species-existence has been abolished.” Note that this is a work by the early Marx, and is written, as were many of his works, in response to that of another writer, Bruno Bauer, who also wrote on the subject of ‘The Jewish Question’. To reiterate: Marx did not coin the expression ‘The Jewish Question’.
On the subject of the relationship between ideology and social structure, Otto Ruhle wrote, and I repeat:
The claim that “Not only did Socialism provide the ideological justification for the Holocaust, it also provided the wording” is totally ludicrous, and is not proven(!) by reference to one, two, or even three statements, taken out of context, and badly misinterpreted, from one, Jewish thinker. That Hitler the Incestuous Coprophiliac chose to adopt the term Judenfrage adds absolutely nothing to your case; so did Marx, so did Herzl, so did literally thousands of others. In reality, Hitler was much more likely to have been inspired by Eugen Karl Dühring, author of Die Judenfrage als Rassen-, Sitten-, und Kulturfrage [The Jewish Question as a Racial, Moral, and Cultural Problem], published in 1881.
More generally:
1) German (and Austrian) society was saturated with anti-Semitism, as was Europe generally;
2) You completely ignore the existence of numerous Jewish socialists and the ‘anti-racist’ non-Jewish individuals, groups, parties, organisations and projects of the era (that is, counter-evidence);
3) In accordance with the phantastically weak framework surrounding your ideology, you leap from one ‘fact’ (Marx wrote something on ‘The Jewish Question’) to the other (Hitler oversaw the attempted genocide of European Jewry) and appear not to even notice;
4) In terms of the theoretical background of German socialism (Social Democracy) in particular, it would make more sense to focus on the ideas of its leaders (for example): Eduard Bernstein, Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg.
5) In reality, there was a spectrum of opinion within European socialist movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries on ‘The Jewish Question’, and varying degrees of support for and opposition to anti-Semitism.
Anyone interested in the subject might wish to read On Socialists and “The Jewish Question” After Marx (1992) by Jack Lester Jacobs. On Marx the anti-Semite, one of the classic formulations is ‘Was Marx an anti-Semite?’, Edmund Silberner, Historia Judaica, Vol.11, No.1 (1949).
Finally, with regards SAlt and anti-Semitism, I made note of this at the time. It was my opinion then and it remains my opinion now that this was a beat-up.
So when a socialist talks about “freeing mankind of Jewry and huckstering Jews” he is talking about the elimination of capital, when a “rightwing” person talks about the same thing, then they really mean extermination?
Uh-ha. Interesting.
What actually determines a socialist society is, besides the doing away with private property in the means of production, the control of the workers over the products of their labour and the end of the wage system.
You mean like this:
“Of what importance is all that, if I range men firmly within a discipline they cannot escape? Let them own land or factories as much as they please. The decisive factor is that the State, through the Party, is supreme over them regardless of whether they are owners or workers. All that is unessential; our socialism goes far deeper. It establishes a relationship of the individual to the State, the national community. Why need we trouble to socialize banks and factories? We socialize human beings.”
( Hitler Speaks, London, T. Butterworth, 1940 )
Yes, I mentioned before that anti-semitism was the backdrop, Hitler’s anti-semitism would not have distinguished him from Engel’s or Marx’s anti-semitism. Here is another interesting quote from a prominent socialist of the time, dealing not only with “Zur Judenfrage” but with race in general:
And how will the New Republic treat the inferior races? How will it deal with the black? how will it deal with the yellow man? how will it tackle that alleged termite in the civilized woodwork, the Jew? Certainly not as races at all.
[…]
It is said that the Jew is incurably a parasite on the apparatus of credit. If there are parasites on the apparatus of credit, that is a reason for the legislative cleaning of the apparatus of credit, but it is no reason for the special treatment of the Jew. If the Jew has a certain incurable tendency to social parasitism, and we make social parasitism impossible, we shall abolish the Jew, and if he has not, there is no need to abolish the Jew.
[…]
There is something very ugly about many Jewish faces, but there are Gentile faces just as coarse and gross. The Jew asserts himself in relation to his nationality with a singular tactlessness, but it is hardly for the English to blame that. Many Jews are intensely vulgar in dress and bearing, materialistic in thought, and cunning and base in method, but no more so than many Gentiles.
[…]
And for the rest, those swarms of black, and brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people, who do not come into the new needs of efficiency?
Well, the world is a world, not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go. The whole tenor and meaning of the world, as I see it, is that they have to go. So far as they fail to develop sane, vigorous, and distinctive personalities for the great world of the future, it is their portion to die out and disappear.
( Anticipations – Herbert George Wells, 1902 )
But I guess Wells’ being a socialist, you’ll suggest he meant he only wanted to exterminate capital, not “inferior races”…
The thesis that the NSDAP had its roots in early twentieth century European communist movements isn’t new or without merit, but it ignores what was unique about the Nazis and why they succeeded over dozens of similar parties in Germany.
It certainly wasn’t Hitler’s anti-semitism that made them more successful than other parties at the time. Perhaps the NSDAP was attractive to socialists because it was a socialist party?
“There is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separates us from it. There is, above all, genuine, revolutionary feeling, which is alive everywhere in Russia except where there are Jewish Marxists. I have always made allowance for this circumstance, and given orders that former Communists are to be admitted to the party at once. The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communists always will.”
( Hitler Speaks, London, T. Butterworth, 1940 )
It is also interesting to note that the most vigorous resurgence of neo-Nazism is occurring in formerly communist states, like the East Germany and Russia…
And Lumpen, I may be ugly, but I’m still too sexy for you.
In the communist society he envisaged, there would be no material basis for this “actual, worldly Jew”. In other words: “Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Jewry, would be the self-emancipation of our time…”. Or: “Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism – huckstering and its preconditions – the Jew will have become impossible…”
This would probably meet the conditions of Article 2(c) of the convention on genocide.
Sweet Jesus.
No: obviously. I was specifically referring to Marx’s 1843 essay on The Jewish Question, not to any and all remarks ‘socialists’ may happen to make about how good it would be to be rid of those tricksy Jews.
Mohammed help me.
In the first instance, Rühle (1874–1943) is arguing that the core element of socialism, properly understood, is workers having control over their labour, exercised not through money, but directly. Hitler, on the other hand, is arguing the opposite: for the rule of the party-state over the worker. The reality in Russia under Bolshevik rule was far removed from Rühle’s conception of socialism, just as the relationship between the Nazi state and German business was far chummier than the one between the Nazi state and the labour movement. And while it appears that you’re actually incapable of comprehending such matters, the whole point of Rühle’s text — the one from which you’ve quoted — is summed up in the title: ‘The Struggle Against Fascism Begins with the Struggle Against Bolshevism’. Rühle was an anti-Bolshevik communist; Hitler, an incestuous corpophiliac and Nazi fucking dicktator.
The distinction between the anti-Semitism of Marx and Engels on the one hand and Hitler on the other is fairly straightforward. For Marx and Engels, their occasional expressions of hatred and contempt for the ‘worldly Jew’ was neither central to nor an indispensable part of their philosophy or politics. In fact, it may be argued — and certainly has been, not least by their Jewish epigones — that such expressions are in fact in contradiction to their otherwise overriding ‘humanistic’ (which is to say, ‘non-racist’) ethical and political commitments. For Hitler, on the other hand, The Jew was absolutely essential to his political imaginary, and in the absence of Hitler’s anti-Semitism, Nazism makes no ‘sense’ at all.
The bottom line is this: National Socialism is a product of socialist thinking at the time, anti-semitism wasn’t central to National Socialism, there was nothing extraordinary about Hitler’s anti-semitism at the time, Hitler was popular for his social policies, not anti-semitism. To deny the influence on Hitler by the likes of Marx and Engels is to deny reality:
“True, it is a fixed idea with the French that the Rhine is their property, but to this arrogant demand the only reply worthy of the German nation is Arndt’s: “Give back Alsace and Lorraine”. For I am of the opinion, perhaps in contrast to many whose standpoint I share in other respects, that the reconquest of the German-speaking left bank of the Rhine is a matter of national honour, and that the Germanisation of a disloyal Holland and of Belgium is a political necessity for us. Shall we let the German nationality be completely suppressed in these countries, while the Slavs are rising ever more powerfully in the East?”
( Telegraph für Deutschland, No. 5, January 1841, F. Engels )
This is our calling, that we shall become the templars of this Grail, gird the sword round our loins for its sake and stake our lives joyfully in the last, holy war which will be followed by the thousand-year reign of freedom.
( Frederick Engels, Schelling and Revelation )
Sounds a lot like something Hitler might have said. Hitler’s anti-semitism and racial theories didn’t spring out of a vacuum, it was influenced by the racist and genocidal eugenics coming out of European socialist thought:
“In January 1849, months before he migrated to London, Karl Marx published an article by Friedrich Engels in Die Neue Rheinische Zeitung announcing that in Central Europe only Germans, Hungarians and Poles counted as bearers of progress. The rest must go. “The chief mission of all other races and peoples, large and small, is to perish in the revolutionary holocaust.”
Genocide arose out of Marx’s master-theory of history — feudalism giving place inevitably to capitalism, capitalism to socialism. The lesser races of Europe — Basques, Serbs, Bretons and others — being sunk in feudalism, were counter-revolutionary; having failed to develop a bourgeoisie, they would be two steps behind in the historical process. Engels dismissed them as left-overs and ethnic trash (Voelkerabfall), and called for their extinction.
So genocide was born as a doctrine in the German Rhineland in January 1849, in a Europe still reeling from the revolutions of 1848. It was to become the beacon light of socialism, proudly held and proudly proclaimed.”
( George Watson )
————
It’s also obvious that when Marx states that “In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Jewry” what he means is not genocide/mass murder, but the elimination of capitalism.
[…]
“Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism – huckstering and its preconditions – the Jew will have become impossible…”
( @ndy )
“Auschwitz meant that six million Jews were killed, and thrown on the waste–heap of Europe, for what they were considered: money-Jews. Finance capital and the banks, the hard core of the system of imperialism and capitalism, had turned the hatred of men against money and exploitation, and against the Jews…. Anti-Semitism is really a hatred of capitalism.“
( Ulrike Meinhof )
So you have been defending the racist, anti-semitic views of Marx, Engels and other socialists of the time and later. You deny reality by trying to assert that Hitler wasn’t influenced by their thinking, you deny anti-semitism in modern socialism as a “media beat-up” and ultimately therefore, you and your contemporaries are from the same mold that Hitler and his socialist filth came from. It also explains why the most energetic resurgence of Neo-Nazism is occurring in primarily former socialist states, because neo-Nazism is socialist. Face it, you and your mates are really paleo-Nazis.
The bottom line is this: National Socialism is a product of socialist thinking at the time, anti-semitism wasn’t central to National Socialism, there was nothing extraordinary about Hitler’s anti-semitism at the time, Hitler was popular for his social policies, not anti-semitism.
Really? Not according to Trotsky, for instance, who was writing at the time. The Nazis were also bitterly opposed by socialist-leaning intellectuals within Germany, such as Walter Benjamin, and Theodor Adorno.
The ‘Hitler was a socialist’ theme is being repeated with increased fervour across the rightist blogosphere, but is not supported by any serious research on the subject. The Nazis engaged in some socialist-style demagogy, and attempted to mobilise a similar ‘target audience’ as did the Reds (i.e workers), but ultimately drew much of their support from the agricultural sector, the petit-bourgeoisie and small business owners. See Paxton’s book on fascism, for example, if you want quite extensive information on the origins of German fascism, and how it was not socialist.
Fascism is simply a branch of socialism, as is communism. The idea that Hitler was somehow “right-wing” is one of the biggest lies of the 20th century. Socialists have been fervently denying the socialist roots of the NSDAP since the war ended. There is plenty of evidence, of which I have only barely touched on, that strongly suggests that the National Socialists were Socialist in nature, including several admissions by Hitler himself. As for Trotsky, there were plenty of other socialists who didn’t like him (or his Zionism, incidentally) either and [he copped] an icepick in the back [front] of the head for his efforts. So it’s not unlikely that the Nazis were opposed to leftist intellectuals based on sectarianism rather than oppositionalism.
As for Trotsky, there were plenty of other socialists who didn’t like him (or his Zionism, incidentally) either and [he copped] an icepick in the back [front] of the head for his efforts. So it’s not unlikely that the Nazis were opposed to leftist intellectuals based on sectarianism rather than oppositionalism.
Holding Stalin as an exemplar of leftism is like holding Hitler as an exemplar of rightism. If the sectarian argument held true, we might expect the Reds and Nazis to have a fairly similar support base. To a large extent, they didn’t – the Reds pitched their ideas to the proles, whilst the Nazis aimed at the groups I mentioned above. It should also be noted that the Nazis (as with Mussolini’s crew) virulently opposed any vaguely leftist organisation, such as trade unions. You also have to deal with the internationalism of most of the Reds at the time, compared to the nationalism of the fascists, which was virtually a defining characteristic of the latter movement.
19th Century Europe produced at least 3 pretty major and relatively clear-cut political philosophies – conservatism, liberalism, and socialism. The 20th Century gave us fascism, which is distinct from the above 3 on numerous grounds.
The claim that Hitler, and fascists generally, were ‘right wing’ possibly has something to do the fact that both Hitler and Mussolini got into power by way of power-sharing deals with the local conservatives and traditional elites, all of whom had a vested interest in keeping the left out of parliament. The rest is history, constantly being revised by rightists with a chip on their shoulder and a notable paucity of evidence.
Darrin: you’re simply repeating yourself.
Yeah, so Engels the 21-year-old Hegelian grappled with the issues of his day, including French and German claims to possession of territories attached to the Rhine. The “bottom line” is that these letters were written prior to both Engels becoming a ‘socialist’ and prior to his initial encounters with Marx. In expressing his worries over terribly unfair claims by the French state to Alsace and Lorraine and the Slavic threat to the East, Engels was merely articulating views quite common to men of his background: just as Hitler’s anti-Semitism was relatively common, so too were Engels’ views on this particular aspect of German national sovereignty. That being the case, it makes no sense to claim that Engels had some peculiarly powerful influence over Hitler in terms of shaping German foreign policy upon the latter’s assumption of power.
A rational analysis of Hitler’s views on Communism, on the other hand, might start with an examination of Hitler’s views on Communism. For example, in 1924, when Hitler was on trial for the Munich putsch, on the subject of Marxism, he stated in court:
Further, it’s also possible to look at Nazism in practice, as well as in theory. And in practice, Nazi opinion was unequivocal. For example, after the Nazis gained power, the German Communist Party (KPD) was banned and its leaders imprisoned. The German Social Democrats (SPD) met the same fate. The Marxists of the Frankfurt School were forced to flee the country at the same time (1933). Note that these are just a sample of the repressive measures the regime took against its opponents, whom you, in screamingly flagrant contradiction of reality, claim to have been their allies. On the Nazi regime’s policy towards the labour movement, for example, see here.
Regarding the place of anti-Semitism in Hitler’s thought and the Nazi Party… to claim that ‘anti-Semitism wasn’t central to Nazism’ simply flies in the face of reality. From first to last Hitler was an anti-Semite.
In practice, the Nazi regime was responsible for the attempted genocide of European Jewry.
In reality, your ‘argument’ — which, strictly speaking, is hardly an argument but instead merely a handful of assertions — is this:
1) Nazism was a direct product of socialism. Specifically, the writings of Marx and Engels.
2) Anti-Semitism was incidental to Nazism.
3) Hitler’s popularity with the German people was based on his Socialism, not his anti-Semitism.
In support of 1), you’ve quoted from:
a) a letter Marx wrote to Engels (dated July 30th, 1862) asserting that the reasons for Lassalle’s alleged personality defects may be found in his allegedly being of Jewish and Negro descent;
b) a letter Engels wrote to Paul Lafargue (July 22nd, 1892) in which he claims to “begin to understand French anti-Semitism” on the basis of the rude behaviour of “many Jews of Polish origin with German names”;
c) Marx’s 1843 essay entitled ‘The Jewish Question’, which happens to have been a term used by Hitler, and which also argues that Judaism will be eradicated along with and as a consequence of the eradication of capitalism;
d) a letter by Engels (‘Telegraph für Deutschland, No. 5’, dated January 1841) in which he asserts that Alsace and Lorraine should be German, not French, territory, and;
e) an essay by Engels on ‘Schelling and Revelation’, in which he refers to a ‘thousand-year reign of freedom’ (and which sounds “a lot like something Hitler might have said”).
That you find this ‘evidence’ sufficient proof that Hitler simply enacted what Marx and Engels proposed is in reality proof of little more than your own feeble-mindedness, prejudice, and gross ignorance: of philosophy, of history, of literature, and of basic logic.
Regarding 2), you provide no evidence, merely assert. If anyone needs convincing of the centrality of anti-Semitism to Nazi ideology and practice, on the other hand, they only need examine it.
Regarding 3), again, you provide no evidence, merely assert.
In general, you demonstrate nothing so much as a basic ignorance, not only of philosophy, history, literature, and logic, but the most basic conventions of scholarship, let alone the wealth of literature dedicated to exploring precisely these questions.
On a personal level, you’ve declared that:
1) I defend the views of Socialist anti-Semites such as Marx and Engels as being right and proper.
2) I deny that Hitler was influenced by Marx and Engels.
3) I maintain that any and all evidence of anti-Semitism in contemporary Socialism is the product of a media beat-up.
4) For these reasons, I am the political equivalent of Hitler. In other words, a paleo-Nazi.
In response:
First, in reality, nowhere have I defended Marx and Engels’ anti-Semitism or racism; on the contrary, what I have done is argued that their anti-Semitism and racism is not solely, largely, or even tangentially, responsible for the emergence of Nazism.
Secondly, Hitler was ‘influenced’ by Marx and Engels in the sense and to the degree that he repudiated their work as being part of a Jewish assault on Western culture, for which he declared it was his historic mission to stop, and in the pursuit of which project he was responsible for instituting policies which resulted in the mass imprisonment and murder of their followers.
Thirdly, when I refer to allegations of anti-Semitism on the part of members of Socialist Alternative as reported in an article in The Age as being a beat-up, I mean precisely that: no more, and no less.
Finally, as is obvious to anyone but a complete lunatic, I am not a neo-Nazi. In which context, unlike yourself, I am not a former member of Stormfront, the world’s leading white supremacist online forum, and one which declares that The Jew is Public Enemy #1; unlike yourself, I did not march on September 8 last year with the New Right, whose leader, Welf Herfurth, is a Holocaust denialist and a good comrade of Australia’s leading denialist Frederick Tobin, and whose ranks consist of an array of Nutzis and anti-Semitic cranks; and, unlike yourself, I’ve never expressed admiration for Hitler’s views on ‘multiculturalism’.
PS. “Once society has succeeded in abolishing the empirical essence of Judaism – huckstering and its preconditions – the Jew will have become impossible…” is Marx, not @ndy.
I didn’t say you were a “Neo-Nazi”. As for Welf’s gig, I went out of interest rather than in the interests of “National Anarchism”, it’s not my cup of tea. I was kicked off Stormfront for not being an anti-semitic neo-nazi crank. Finally, I did say that (about Hitler’s view on multiculturalism) before I knew or fully understood the real nature of Fascism and its German variant, Nazism – being that they are socialist ideologies.
You are denying the influence of the background anti-semitism contributed to by the likes of Marx and Engles on the development of Nazism. You are defending their anti-semitism and racism, because you deny the centrality of anti-semitism to the fruition of the socialist’s vision for a socialist future. The fact that many, many times Engels in particular called for the extermination of lesser races, Marx insisted (as you helpfully demonstrated) that the freeing of mankind from Jewry is really about freeing mankind from capitalism, therefore allows for the development of a doctrine like Nazism that seeks to eliminate the Jew in its quest to herald in a brave new era beyond capital.
Even the Swastika was a product of socialism, the patch in this image was worn by Soviet soldiers during and after World War I. The swastika was being used before Hitler used it, particularly by some American socialists, as the two arms represented two intertwined letters, “S”, for socialism.
And as I keep saying, the Nazi persecution of other brands of Socialism was sectarian in nature.
Neo / Paleo: meet the new Nazi, same as the old Nazi.
Whether you claim to have gone along out of interest or not, the fact is that you took part in the demonstration. The demonstration was organised by Herfurth and the New Reich. Herfurth is a denialist; the New Reich is anti-Semitic. The Melbourne teenager who attended thinks the Shoah was, literally, a joke.
Last September, these were your comrades. “Face it, you and your mates are really paleo-Nazis”? Cheeky cunt.
Inre Stormfront, your first departure was a voluntary retirement, on December 19, 2005, at the time of the publication of an article in The Daily Telegraph (Joe Hildebrand, ‘White supremacists casting a black cloud’) identifying you as being the pseudonymous ‘Proud to be an Infidel’, one of many cretins on SF who celebrated the Cronulla uprising:
You said nothing about your political views having changed, or took this opportunity — a rather obvious one — to repudiate your former (sic) hatred and contempt for Jews. In fact, you lied and denied that you were a member of SF.
Two and a half weeks later, you re-joined SF, and remained a member for approximately another 18 months, being kicked off at around the same time (May/June 2007) as you were also kicked out of Australia First… the Party whose leader you now denounce, rather ironically, as a neo-Nazi — something which was apparent to everyone else for quite quite some time prior to this fact dawned on the newly-baptised anti-Nazi. On the subject of Hitler’s views on ‘multiculturalism’ (sic), while you may have changed your spots, they, by definition, have not.
Anyway, so much for your recent political history and involvement in anti-Semitic groups and forums — as it is, you now appear to be changing your argument in any case. Apparently, I am now accused of “denying the influence of the background anti-semitism contributed to by the likes of Marx and Engels on the development of Nazism”, which is a completely different kettle of fish to denying that Nazism is the product of Marx and Engels’ philosophy.
In other words, I’m happy to concede that the anti-Semitism of Marx and Engels constituted part of the cultural background to the emergence of the NSDAP. On the other hand, it was a very minor contribution, one dwarfed by three other factors:
1) The existence of a mass of other anti-Semitic ideologues, including but not limited to Richard Wagner, Paul De Lagarde, Julius Langbehn, Stefan George, Theodor Fritsch, Otto Dickel, Arthur Moeller Van Den Bruck, Edgar Jung, Ernst Jünger, Ernst Von Salomon, Oswald Spengler, Otto Strasser, Franz Pfeffer Von Salomon, Joseph Goebbels, Gottfried Feder, Gregor Strasser, Hans F. K. Günther, R. Walther Darré, E. Günther Gründel, Alfred Rosenberg, Hermann Goering, Gottfried Benn, Paula Siber, Carl Schmitt and of course many others whom you are no doubt equally in ignorance of (with one or two rather obvious exceptions).
2) Marx and Engels wrote a lot of other stuff. And when I write “a lot”, I means lots and lots and lots. In fact, most of their writing, and of course their practical activity, had fuck-all to do with promoting anti-Semitism… unlike, say that of Mr. Hitler, the Nazi Party, or a whole lot of others. And when I write “a lot”, I means lots and lots and lots.
3) While the Marxist Parties which were established in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century consisted of diverse tendencies, many — in fact the majority — did not pursue anti-Semitism as the leading plank on their political platform. In fact, many were led by Jews, and many members denounced anti-Semitism.
Finally, the swastika is an ancient symbol, and not a product of socialism, having been used for thousands of years prior to its adoption by either some obscure American socialist sect or a rather more famous German one. That, and you’re an ignoramus.
In that case, it was an ancient symbol that the socialists used first in the Soviet Union which was later copied by Hitler because to them it represented the socialist Ideal –
“As National socialists we see our programme in our flag. In red we see the social thoughts of the movement, in white the nationalist thoughts, in the hooked-cross the mission of fighting for the victory of Aryan man and at the same time the victory of the concept of creative work”
(S)ieg (S)ozialismus! perhaps represented by the intertwined “hooked-cross”?
As for my banning from StormFront, it took place on the 14/12/2006 –
All Heil Queen of the Nazi’s [sic]
Seriously mate you have taken it to [sic] far.
Maybe you would be best suited over at FDB with the rest of your Jew loving mates. After such a blatent [sic] attack like that you are not welcome here any more.
Happy Hanukah [sic]
Some 6 months earlier than you suggest and some time after those other events you mention. All represents is [sic] your sad attempts are [sic] try to paint me as something I am not, I’m not a neo-nazi because I’m not a socialist, but naturally that doesn’t work for you blokes because it deprives you of an enemy as such.
Hmmm, seem to have broken the link the last post, it should be:
http://www . stormfront.org/forum/showpost.php?p=3691279&postcount=25Also it’s interesting that Jimbo’s Nazis are calling me a Nazi. That is, when they’re not calling me a Zionist. I guess that can happen when you have the likes of John Drew and his member in the AFP:
Originally Posted by wagnerite
On my mobile phone I now have a wonderful photograph of a huge erection I had recently. I can send it to you as an attachment to a MMS assuming your mobile phone can take such a message. You can then store in the pictures section of your mobile phone’s memory. I will need your phone number and a statement that you are older than 18 years of age.
This offer is only available to female members of Stormfront Downunder discussion group as the cost of sending MMS messages is high.
He has also threatened to start his http://www.johndrew.net website and include artistic pictures of his wedding-tackle.
On your final departure from SF, I stand corrected: Emma cracked the whip in December 2006, only 12 months following your initial resignation. However, I assume it to be correct to state that it was only in May or June of last year that your membership of AF was terminated.
More generally, and based on the contents of that thread, your concern does not appear to be the falseness of the thesis that the Holocaust was a “Holohoax” as Herfurth maintains, but that an association with neo-Nazism — such as that linked to denialist activity — serves to isolate and to marginalise white nationalists from the political mainstream. For purely pragmatic reasons then, it should be abandoned. I take it that you now acknowledge that not only is such denialism damaging to one’s reputation but also objectionable because it is false.
With regards the swastika, I’m not sure what your point is. Or rather, it seems so tenuous I find it hard to believe you bother making it. Then again…
OK, so a Russian calvary unit under the Bolsheviks used a swastika as a symbol… and? The swastika was in use in Germany and elsewhere in Europe for several decades before that. Besides: ever heard of the hammer and sickle?
ever heard of the hammer and sickle?
Is that a new band?
You seem to have left, Marx, Engels, de Gobineau and Bellamy off your little list. Also a number of those listed were Hitler’s contemporaries and therefore like Hitler, products of the same socialist theories that led to the development of the NSDAP.
I don’t think that those who seek to deny the Holocaust should be locked up though, I believe they should be allowed to continue making public arseheads of themselves.
Ultimately I suspect I would have resisted Nazism had I been around at the time, not only because they were socialists, they were also throughly anti-Christian (as is Partytrick’s WCOTC) –
Other members of the Hitler government, including Rosenberg, during the war formulated a thirty-point program for the “National Reich Church” which included:
* The National Reich Church claims exclusive right and control over all Churches.
* The National Church is determined to exterminate foreign Christian faiths imported into Germany in the ill omened year 800.
* The National Church demands immediate cessation of the publishing and dissemination of the Bible.
* The National Church will clear away from its alters all crucifixes, Bibles and pictures of saints.
* On the altars there must be nothing but Mein Kampf and to the left of the altar a sword.
I also find it odd that Hitler passed laws banning kosher slaughter, but seems to have forgotten about halal slaughter… And I certainly would not have been impressed with my teenage daughter coming home pregnant after attending Hitler’s “youth camps” either.
1) Damn! I could’ve sworn Marx and Engels had been mentioned already.
2) de Gobineau was French.
3) Bellamy? Do you mean Edward or Francis? Neither were German. Hitler read them? Or are you simply regurgitating what rexcurry.net states?
You’re a genius at avoiding the blindingly obvious, so I’ll spell it out for you.
4) All of the persons I listed weren’t only anti-Semites but:
a) German;
b) active;
c) active in Germany;
d) published in Germany;
e) published in Germany on the subject of anti-Semitism;
f) published in Germany on the subject of anti-Semitism and nationalist responses to it;
g) published in Germany on the subject of anti-Semitism and nationalist responses to it in the period from pre-WWI to the early years of the Third Reich (1933–1935).
In other words, these writers and thinkers — ideologues — were either major influences on the German cultural sources of anti-Semitism and radical right-wing nationalism for Hitler and the Nazis, or directly involved (Otto Strasser, Franz Pfeffer Von Salomon, Joseph Goebbels, Gottfried Feder, Gregor Strasser, Hans F. K. Günther, R. Walther Darré, Alfred Rosenberg, Hermann Goering, Paula Siber and Carl Schmitt) in its establishment, administration and crimes.
5) Wilhelm Marr — a German journalist — originated the term anti-Semitism, in 1879.
6) Alfred Schuler — a poet — established the place of the swastika in German fascism, a decade before the birth of the Nazi movement.
Your knowledge of German cultural and political history in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century would fit on the back of a postage stamp. So too, your knowledge of the history of the NSDAP, the DAP, Hitler himself, the Second Reich, the Weimar Republic, German fascism before the Nazi seizure of power, Nazism before 1933, the early years of the Third Reich, its consolidation, and of the Nazi regime at war. You remain in ignorance of the close relationship between the Nazi Party and German elites, the position of the ancien regime, the sources of Nazi support, as well as its opposition. You know almost nothing of Marx and Engels, German Social Democracy, the impact of WWI, interpretations of fascism by Marxists (Orthodox, Western or dissident), fascism as a product of structural forces, or fascism as the subject of psycho-sexual and psycho-historical analyses. You know still less concerning the ideological, political and street battles fought between the Freikorps, the DAP, the NSDAP and the SPD, KAP and others, from the end of WWI through until the early years of the Nazi regime’s establishment. You are completely unable to place Nazism within the context of the development of European fascism, or to explain the different roles that the Communist and Socialist Parties played in response to it, in different countries and at different times, or as a result of the dictates of ‘Soviet’ foreign policy as communicated through, for example, the Comintern.
I’m not even gonna start on Nazism and Christianity, Islam, religion, youth camps and sexuality — there’s really no point.
supposedly, de gobineau was not anti-semitic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_de_Gobineau
ghassan hage’s critique of australian ‘multi-culturalism’ [hyphen usage found on dictionary.com]:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiculturalism#Intellectual_critique
my professor emeritus of sociology once said that national socialism was neither nationalism nor socialism. can’t remember why.
hey pimp,
here’s some choice words from hage. i mean, hodges:
“Australia was a beautiful place once, before it was flooded with third-world sewerage from African [sic] and Asia.” February 26
“The hide of foreign students demanding our secular universities re-arrange everything just to suit the[ir] filthy religion…” February 25
(On why Darrin supports Aboriginal land rights) “Kosovo belongs to Serbia, not the Mohammaden hordes who with the help of the United States, have stolen the land.” February 17
(On the Stolen Generations apology) “…Rudd has re-written Australian history today and condemned an entire generation of Australians to a fate worse then [sic] death, he has condemned a people to extinction…” February 13
“How stupid do they think we are? The whole Habib family should be deported, they are a blight on this country.” February 9
“They are traitors just by the very fact they are Muslim…” February 5
(On contradiction) “This is the future the establishment have been longing for since before 1966 when the criminal traitors in the parliament opened the flood gates to the “yellow hordes”. The establishment is not beyond learning from history and are “asianising” Australia from the top and the bottom, with White Australia being squeezed out of the middle. The Establishment view Australia as an economic entity not as a nation of people and it doesn’t matter to them if the labour is white or yellow.” February 3
Like all other [sexy] socialist scum, none of you can stand the fact that Hitler was a socialist scum and was one of yours.
😆
I see you’ve given up on being all intelekshual ‘n’ that.
Not at all, there isn’t much point arguing with somebody who just spews the socialist dogma they picked up in between drinks at the university bar.
😆
http://www . youtube.com/watch?v=3velLZhGUhg
http://www . youtube.com/watch?v=x81F28kPXuo
Darrin,
Buffalo Bill makes and enforces the rules by which others are required to play the game. Understand that there is little empathy for the condition of the other.
The Kosher “anarchists” are more likely nihilists who are attracted to the social sciences because social constructs can be manufactured and destroyed at will. It gives them a psycho-sexual opportunity to play “God” with the lives of others.
Physical principles of time, matter and space are, so far, more or less immutable and the social scientists eschew them because he is constrained and “imprisoned” by them.
The social authoritarian feels disempowered by that fact, the fact that he is not and cannot play “God”.
For them the attraction of the social sciences rests in the ability to monopolise control of the market in ideas and mould the destiny of others, and in this we find a clue to the nature of their psychosis.
Certain acolytes of certain mindsets make it their life’s work… Telling other perceived “lessers” what and how to run their life and then foisting themselves on others with “Hate Laws” and the like.
Any recalcitrant reactionaries that nostalgically refuse to play the game are deemed hatefully “insane” and should be killed for their ungrateful disobedience.
I think Darrin is in the middle of a breakdown. Nothing a nice, thick coating of tin foil to the cranium can’t fix, amiright?
Kinky: It’s like… it’s like you’ve read my mind!
Lumpen: Tin foil helmet? For Dazza? Or Kinky? Two bald men fighting over a comb I think.
That you publish just about anything suggests you may have abandoned your “Jewishness”, if any, and entered the world of the Goyim who seek the Meaning of Life above power over others, position and self important flagellation of self and others.
There are those individuals that might be called “Jewish” Gentiles. “Jews” are always the first to censor and gravitate to a title, the law, and control of others through ability to purchase a whore or position that abuses Goyish agreeance abide by the “Law” … because it is manifest destiny … to manipulate the affairs of others.
There’s plenty for everyone.
PS I’m living in Jewtopia.
I sent the club a wire stating, PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON’T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT ME AS A MEMBER.